YES, THERE ARE SOME GOOD PEERS . . . BUT NOT THIS BUNCH OF ROGUES
ACCUSED OF SEXUAL HARASSMENT
Lord Rennard was chief executive of the Lib Dems. In 2013 a number of women alleged a history of sexual harassment going back six years. It emerged that Nick Clegg had been told of the claims but did nothing. A series of inquiries concluded there was insufficient evidence to take the case further. Lord Rennard was briefly suspended from the Lib Dems after refusing to apologise. He was criticised over his expenses in 2010 but cleared following an inquiry.
EXPENSES CHEAT
Baron Bassam was a Labour councillor in Brighton until he was made a peer by Tony Blair in 199 . The former squatter, who founded the Brighton and Hove Squatters’ Union, became Labour chief whip in the Lords under Gordon Brown. He continued as opposition chief whip after the election until last year when he resigned over an expenses scandal. He agreed to repay up to £41,000 after it emerged he was claiming expenses to travel home to Brighton while also claiming to stay overnight in London.
EXPENSES CHEAT
Swraj Paul is one of Britain’s richest men having founded steel company Caparo. He was appointed a life peer by John Major in 1996, but later donated £500,000 to Labour. He became the first person of Indian origin to become deputy Lords speaker, and was appointed to the Privy Council. In 2009 it was reported he had been unable satisfactorily to explain claiming £38,000 in expenses and immediately repaid £42,000. The Met Police said there was no case to answer, but he was suspended from the Lords for four months and resigned as deputy speaker.
EXPENSES CHEAT
Tory peer Lord Hanningfield was convicted of six counts of false accounting during the expenses scandal. He had claimed for overnight stays when he had in fact returned to his home in Essex. He was sentenced to nine months’ jail but was released after just a quarter of his sentence, and allowed back in the Lords after repaying £30,000. He was later accused of ‘clocking on’ at the Lords to claim a £300 daily allowance despite spending less than 40 minutes in the chamber.
EXPENSES CHEAT
Baroness Uddin, a former youth worker who went on to become deputy leader of Tower Hamlets Council, was made the first female Muslim peer by Tony Blair in 1998. In 2010 she was ordered to repay £125,349 after an inquiry found her housing claims had been ‘made wrongly and in bad faith’. She had claimed her main home was an unoccupied flat in Kent while actually living in a rented house in London. She was suspended from the Lords for 18 months and now sits as an independent peer.
CASH FOR INFLUENCE
Lord Truscott was a British petroleum and mining consultant before being elected a Labour member of the European Parliament in 1994. He was made a peer in 2004. Five years later he hit the headlines as part of the ‘cash for influence’ scandal as one of four Labour peers named by a newspaper as being willing to accept money to help companies amend Bills which would have harmed them. He sought a £ 2,000 fee to ‘smooth the way’ for lobbyists. He became the first peer to be suspended since the 1 th century, and resigned the Labour whip.
EXPENSES CHEAT
Conservative Lord Taylor of Warwick, a barrister, was elevated to the peerage by John Major, but in 2010 he was charged with offences connected with claims totalling £11,2 . He was convicted on all charges and was jailed for 12 months. He claimed he had been told the allowances were in lieu of salary. In 1992 he stood for election as the Tory MP for Cheltenham in a campaign dominated by race. He failed to win after his constituency party was openly split over having a black candidate.
JAILED OVER FATAL CRASH
Lord Ahmed, a former Labour councillor in Rotherham, was handed a peerage by Tony Blair in 2008 despite controversy over his claim that knighting Salman Rushdie was an insult to all Muslims. He was jailed for 12 weeks in 2009 after he admitted dangerous driving by sending a string of texts shortly before his Jaguar hit a stationary car on the M1, killing its driver. He was suspended by Labour in 2013 after allegedly claiming his imprisonment was the result of a Jewish conspiracy, and now sits as an independent.
CASH FOR INFLUENCE
Lord Taylor of Blackburn, a former union official, was also caught up in the cash for influence scandal. As part of the newspaper sting, he told journalists posing as lobbyists that he would help a business secure favourable legislation in their sphere of interest in return for a fee reported to be in excess of £100,000. The Lords voted to suspend him for six months. Lord Taylor was also accused of claiming huge amounts in expenses despite barely speaking. In 2005 he claimed £5 ,000 – the second highest – but only spoke 15 times.
EXPENSES CHEAT
Millionaire businessman Lord Bhatia was ennobled by Tony Blair in 2001. Nine years later he was told to repay £2 ,446 and suspended from the Lords for eight months after claiming expenses for living in a two-bedroom flat in Reigate, Surrey, while actually living in his £1.5million home in London. He faced a second suspension in 2016 after an inquiry found that he had double claimed travel expenses from both the Lords and the headquarters of his charity, the Ethnic Minority Foundation.
HOTEL FIRESTARTER
Lord Watson of Invergowrie, a Labour peer and former Scottish culture minister, received a 16-month prison sentence in 2005 for starting a fire at an Edinburgh hotel following a heavy drinking session. He was caught on CCTV at the Scottish Politician of the Year awards taking matches from his sporran and setting fire to a curtain in the hotel’s main reception in the small hours. Watson was expelled from Labour after his conviction, but readmitted in 2012 and now serves as a shadow education minister.
‘LORD MOAT’
Viscount Hailsham, formerly Douglas Hogg, was nicknamed Lord Moat for his role in the 2009 MPs’ expenses scandal. The ex-minister under Margaret Thatcher and John Major claimed the cost of having a moat cleared, piano tuned and stable lights fixed at his 13th century country manor. He repaid the £2,200 cost of clearing the moat and became the first MP to announce he would be leaving Parliament over the scandal. This month the Eton-educated barrister angered many when he described the Brexit referendum as an ‘interim decision’.